Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1996 22:23:44 GMT
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        <title>Octavio Paz on the North Americans </title>
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The North American system only wants to consider the positive aspects
of reality. Men and women are subjected from childhood to an
inexorable process of adaptation; certain principles, contained in
brief formulas, are endlessly repeated by the press, the radio, the
churches and the schools, and by those kindly, sinister beings, the
North American mothers and wives. A person imprisoned by these schemes
is like a plant in a flowerpot too small for it: he cannot grow or
mature. This sort of conspiracy cannot help but provoke violent
individual rebellions. Spontaneity avenges itself in a thousand subtle
or terrible ways. The mask that replaces the dramatic mobility of the
human face is benevolent and courteous but empty of emotion, and its
set smile is almost lugubrious: it shows the extent to which intimacy
can be devastated by the arid victory of principles over instincts.
The sadism underlying almost all types of relationships in
contemporary North American life is perhaps nothing more than a way of
escaping the petrification imposed by that doctrine of aseptic moral
purity.

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<!WA0><a href="http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/mock/paz-spanish.html"><b>Octavio Paz, El laberinto de la soledad.</b></a>
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<!WA1><a href="http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/mock/"> <!WA2><img alt="Back to my
home page" src=http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/mock/haus.gif></a>

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